Chapter 31

Rome, the ides of September AD 69

Geminus

‘ Valens is ill. If he hasn’t got the bloody flux, then he’s been poisoned. Either way, he may not live to see the next new moon. He certainly won’t be riding out today or tomorrow.’

Hard though it was to believe, Caecina was in a blacker mood now, at ten o’clock in the morning, than he had been at daybreak. He heard out my report in silence, pacing back and forth a dozen strides each way, hands caught behind his back, shoulders concave.

At the end, he spun on his heel to face me. ‘Then we need another general. I cannot possibly be expected to lead detachments from eight different legions, four of them loyal only to Valens. If I am to…’

He drifted to a halt. His eyes grew wide and his scowl swept through a startling spectrum from fury to surprise to self-examination to a slick-hair, straighten-belt smile of sunny delight that I had never before seen on his face and would have had real trouble imagining.

‘ Jocasta! ’

He was past me, veritably leaping across the parade ground to the gate, where stood a tall dark-haired woman dressed in a stola of deep, deep red, almost black, fashioned from a silk that radiated a quality, a richness, a raw, demanding sensuality that was a forgotten thing on a parade ground, and often in a fighting man’s life.

Caecina was a comet, a blazing ball of light, so complete was his transformation. Long before I could have reached him — I didn’t try — he had bowed, made his excuses for the state of his barracks, his hair, his dress, and swept the lady forward into his office. They entered it, unchaperoned.

Without undue effort, I managed to find duties that allowed me to keep an eye on the door. Nobody entered and nobody left until shortly before noon.

Caecina came out first. He had combed his hair, but otherwise he looked much as he did any time he walked out of his office; he was never the kind of man to let his belt hang awry, or to have stains on his tunic. He was a monument to perfection in the legions, and he knew it.

The lady Jocasta emerged on his heels and she, too, had not a hair disarrayed. She was as cool as any Roman matron going about her business in Rome. This did not necessarily mean, of course, that their intercourse in the office had been entirely cerebral.

In my experience, the men and women of the senatorial class are trained from birth in how to look outwardly cool while their inner lives are in turmoil. They could have been rutting like rats on the far side of the door, and nobody would necessarily have known anything about it.

Whatever they had done, Caecina was manifestly in a better mood. He escorted the lady to the gate and assigned eight Guards to escort her wherever she might choose to go next. There was a spring in his step as he marched back to me so that I had to fight not to grin at him as he approached.

‘All well?’ he asked as he came within hailing distance.

‘All is well, lord. The detachments of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Twenty-first legions are ready. The Twenty-second has had an outbreak of thrush in their stables; eight mules have gone lame. Replacements are being sent for and they’ll be ready by nightfall. They can march to join you with tomorrow’s dawn.’

‘Excellent! Excellent.’ Caecina rubbed his hands down his arms. ‘They are the best Rome has to offer. Get them gathered so that I can tell them so. We’re going to march out of here today shining — shining! — so that Antonius Primus and all the rest of Vespasian’s men know exactly what’s coming against them, and tremble at the sight.’

It was such a spectacular change of tone, delivered with such enthusiasm, that it was only many days later, when the disaster had happened, that I looked back and saw the seeds of catastrophe sown in that moment when Caecina’s talk was all about how well his men looked, and not at all about the strength of their fighting capacity.

At the time, I did as I was told: gathered the men, ordered them into tidy lines and stepped back to let Caecina take his rightful position on the podium, ready to address them And found I had trodden on Lucius’ foot, and must move aside, awkwardly, and fall into apologies; I was most sorry, I had no idea that the emperor’s brother had graced us with his presence. I absolutely did not intend ‘Of course you didn’t.’ Lucius’ whisper was more deafening than most men’s shout. ‘Stop grovelling and listen to me. I hear you are on the verge of capturing Trabo?’

‘Juvens is, yes.’

It was Juvens’ job. Juvens drew his name. Lucius should have been speaking to him.

‘Don’t.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Don’t take him. Watch him, yes. Approach him, definitely. Find a place he can’t escape from and corner him. But don’t arrest him, and certainly don’t kill him.’

‘May I ask why?’

Lucius’ smile was quenched in snake blood. ‘We have word that Trabo is working with Pantera. The two have made an alliance. Since July, I have been trying to place someone on the inside of Pantera’s network and now we have someone handed to us on a plate.’

‘I’m sorry, do I understand you rightly? You think Trabo, who held Otho as he died, who has given pledges on the altar of the legions’ god that he will see Vitellius removed from power, you really believe he can be turned to our cause?’

‘I know he can. The man is an incurable romantic, prone to grand gestures. Corner him, and offer him a deal in exchange for his life: he will spy against Pantera for us, or we will kill those for whom he cares most before we kill him. Let him know that the lady Jocasta is vulnerable if he refuses. If you need to sweeten it, tell him the price will be removed from his head the day Vespasian is dead and the insurrection dies. If he serves us well, he can be a tribune of the Guard again.’

‘And if he accepts, what do you want him to do?’

‘You will arrange a means by which he can contact you. Keep it simple. Keep it foolproof. I want details of everything Pantera does, of who helps him, who doesn’t, what they offer. And particularly I want to know how he gets his messages to and from the generals. He has reawakened the old Antonine messenger service from the days of Caesar and Octavian and he’s using it to keep in touch with the legions. When Pantera dies, that service will be mine. It’s more important than he is.’

‘Then why don’t we take Trabo and question him? He could tell us where Pantera is and then we could question Pantera. However committed he is to his cause, there is no man who can withstand the inquisitors for long.’

Lucius pulled a face. ‘He lasted three days in Britain and told them nothing of value. I would like to think we have greater skill, but we can’t be sure of it. If he dies and we have learned nothing, we will be in more danger than if we had left him alive. The enemy you know is a dozen times easier to fight than the one you don’t.’

There was a light in Lucius’ face I had not seen before; he thrived on the hunt and, like Juvens in the morning, had seen his way clear to a kill. Except in his case, he wanted to prolong the chase as long as possible.

He clapped my shoulder. ‘Geminus, you’re a natural diplomat. Use all your skills on Trabo and get me what I need. There’s a generalship in it for you if you succeed in this.’

There was a time when I would have given my right arm for the chance to serve as a general. But only emperors can make or unmake senior officers and the very fact that Lucius felt safe in making the offer without first asking his brother left me profoundly despondent.

I saluted, and went to find Juvens, to tell him the news that he wasn’t going to get to kill Trabo and I wasn’t to be allowed to arrest Pantera, and what we had to do instead. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy. I wasn’t quite ready for the explosive fury that followed.

‘Fuck that! I gave my oath in the temple of Jupiter that I’d hunt Trabo down and kill him and now you want me to call him a friend? Are you completely out of your fucking mind?’

I shrugged. ‘Lucius ordered it. If you want to tell him he’s an imbecile, feel free. I’ll wait here.’

‘ Fuck you.’

‘Right, then…’

We spent most of the afternoon setting up what we needed. When we had done, I have to say, it went with satisfying smoothness.

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